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| Three of the thousands of Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces over the past 20 years. |
Joe Quinn - About a month ago, a Fatah-Hamas unity government was sworn in. Netanyahu warned/threatened the whole world not to recognize it because, he claimed, it 'opened the door to terrorism'. He also attempted to threaten Fatah by claiming it would be responsible for any 'rocket attacks' from Gaza into Israel. The real reason for Israeli aversion to a united Palestinian government however is that Israel has worked very hard over the past 40 years to prevent any form of Palestinian unity. A united Palestinian front committed to achieving Palestinian rights through peaceful processes would make it much more difficult for the Israelis to justify their Apartheid state built on the decades-long occupation of Palestinian land by force, not to mention the regular murder of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military.
The situation in Palestine is made more complicated by the likely involvement of 'jihadi' groups sponsored by Saudi Arabia and other US-client Gulf states that see a divided Middle East as the best way to maintain their positions of power.
In any case, Netanyahu's warning to the world fell, largely, on deaf ears with several countries, including the USA, welcoming the development. Norway went as far as to 'normalize relations' with the new Palestinian 'interim government'.
About one week after the Fatah-Hamas deal however, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped in the West Bank. No one claimed responsibility, but, as always, Israel pointed the finger at Hamas. Coincidentally, or not, one of the three teens held dual Israeli-American citizenship
An Israeli bomb explodes at a Palestinian house - July 1st 2014
Yesterday, it was announced that the bodies of the three teenagers have been found, with the prevailing sentiment being that, if Hamas can be connected, in any way, to the deaths, even by supposition, the embryonic unity government is 'dead in the water'. Of course, the Israeli government does not require any actual evidence to justify bombing Palestinians, they know they can rely solely on emotional manipulation and the racism on which Israeli society thrives to kill as many Palestinians as they like. And so it was that, yesterday, Netanyahu quickly (as if on cue) blamed Hamas for the murders and, calling Palestinians 'human animals', ordered bombs to be dropped on Gaza. For good measure, the Israeli press reported that a group "linked to ISIS in Iraq" had claimed responsibility for the kidnappings.
The entire episode is a bit too convenient to be believable. Either the unity government is now dead, as predicted, or Israel gets to use the deaths of the three teens to justify another round of bombing of the Gaza strip, literally blowing apart (once again) the latest attempt at Palestinian unity. Either way, Israel wins, yet again, by deception. It also makes very little sense for Hamas to knowingly scupper its own strategy of joining a unified Palestinian leadership and engaging in diplomatic dialogue by killing three Israeli teenagers immediately after signing the agreement. This apparently feckless and self-destructive approach to getting what they want has however been a hallmark of Palestinian political strategy for many years. "Palestinian suicide bombings" and rocket attacks from Gaza have repeatedly occurred at the most opportune times for the Israeli government and the most inopportune times for the Palestinian leadership and people. The bombings and rocket attacks are used by the Israelis as evidence that Palestinians cannot be negotiated with and are inveterate "terrorists" who hate the Jewish people more than they love their own freedom from Israeli oppression and occupation.
Given these facts, a much more plausible explanation is that some special element of the Israeli state security apparatus abducted and killed the Israeli teens to achieve an ongoing Israeli political objective: the prevention, at all costs, of Palestinian political unity and therefore ultimately the end of the Apartheid state of Israel as we know it today. When you understand the extent to which the Palestinian territories (or what's left of them) are infiltrated and overrun by the Israelis, the fact that the teens were abducted in the West Bank implicates Israel in the abduction rather than any Palestinian group. If the teens were kidnapped in Israel, Netanyahu would have to provide evidence of Palestinian culpability and explain how they were able to freely enter Israel and carry out such an operation. Since the teens were abducted in the West Bank however, no evidence or explanation is necessary. The method by which agents of the state of Israel could have carried out the kidnapping is explained by Rima Merriman, an American citizen of Palestinian descent who is assistant professor of American literature at the Arab American University in Jenin (AAUJ) in the occupied West Bank:
Readers of Sott.net will not be surprised to hear that, in response to news of the murder of the teens, Barak Obama expressedhis deepest condolences to the families of the teens and condemned the "senseless act of terror," Over the same period of time that the three Israeli teens were abducted and killed, 6 Palestinian teenagers were killed by the Israeli military, yet I don't recall any sympathetic words from Obama for the "indescribable pain" of the Palestinian families. Come to think of it, I don't recall any US president even mentioning the fact that, over the past 13 years, the Israeli military has, on average, killed one Palestinian child every three days.
From a broad US/Israeli geo-political perspective (which is the only perspective that concerns the US/Israeli elite) the kidnapping and murder of the three
Three Israeli teenagers are dead, the demonisation of the Palestinian people as 'terrorists' and the slow ethnic cleansing of Palestine will continue, and Israel remains 'secure'. Job well done.
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